News - Commentary

With the approach of winter, there are more and more heated debates about heat, gas and electricity tariffs in Ukraine. The Ukrainian government is facing a growing political pushback on the tariff increase schedule adopted in April 2016.

On 15th June 2016 IISD hosted a webinar on the “Future of Coal in China”, including Lauri Myllyvirta, Greenpeace; Dr.Liu Qiang, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences; and Peter Wooders, Richard Bridle and Hongxia Duan, Global Subsidies Initiative. One of the key topics of discussion was growing overcapacity of coal fired electricity generators. This blog examines the topic in more detail.

On 28 June, Indonesia’s government and parliament reached consensus on the revised state budget for 2016. The budget is an important indicator for Indonesia’s subsidies to fossil fuels in the year ahead. This blog provides an overview.

Kerosene is used by millions of households in rural India to meet basic lighting needs, and subsidies have long been used to make the fuel more affordable. But for health, safety and environmental reasons, a switch to solar power is better—and more affordable in the absence of kerosene subsidies.

In 2015, Indonesia reinvested over US$ 15 billion (equal to more than 10 per cent of all state expenditure) in fuel subsidy savings, including major boosts for social protection and infrastructure—showing by example how G-20 governments and other countries can use fuel subsidy reform to finance sustainable development.

Kerosene subsidies are expensive: estimated to be more than US$ 4 billion in West Africa and more than US$ 5 billion in India. What are governments—often with highly limited resources—achieving by spending all this money? And with an increasing number of countries committing to reform subsidies, what will it mean for energy access if these policies are removed?

When it comes to phasing out subsidies to the production of polluting oil, gas and coal—something G-20 leaders have committed to every year since 2009—we’re seeing little progress. So what are the most encouraging stories of reform to fossil fuel production subsidies—and the most frustrating? Which countries are showing leadership, and which are lagging behind?

At the national level, the highly regressive social distribution of fuel subsidies—and in particular of diesel and liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) subsidies—is well documented. Less widely understood is the structural discrimination between states inherent in both current and previous fuel subsidy policies, with consumers and businesses in India’s poorest states receiving a disproportionately low share of total subsidy transfers.

Further to our recent blog post analyzing the fiscal impact of direct transfer for LPG in FY 2014-15, this blog provides additional data on recent trends in LPG consumption and subsidy expenditure in India.